Being Peter Buck - What I Did on Friday - Lukes Haines Peter Buck & Minus Five at The Cluny

 

I haven't been out for a while. Focusing on work, Doing My paperwork. Building up my bank account. Staying in evenings. Going to the fitness centre. Calling my mum. A holiday coming up.

I wake up early Friday morning. I have three classes. .I run my bath. Have my breakfast. Send some songs to a friend as I have done for  the last six months. This morning Ania gets Johnny Cash and nods her approval . She listens to him in bed with her cappuccino and asks me if I've seen Walk the Line. Then does her ablutions and wanders off for a walk in the forest with her daughter's attack chihuahua Charlie. She's feeling 'energetik'. Always the pedantic teacher, I correct her spelling. She doesn't seem to mind. I get lots of smiley faces. Pictures of her muscles. She likes to keep fit.  

My lessons are planned. Powerpoints sent. At half seven I go to Google Calendar and am submitted into a virtual classroom. Just D***** tiday. One of my favourite students. She's always great company. Charm and grace.Incredibly able. Very good English  A lady with teenage dughters and a plump hubby. He's a steadfast, reliable type who sometimes says hello on the video screen behind her . D*****'s clearly made a good choice  . He's the kind of person you want to marry. Someone who's there. 

She's canidid. Let's things slip about her feelings about work and life. That's what these classes are like sometimes. What'is said in virtual classrooms stays in virtual classrooms.Apart from my writing about it here. . Sorry,   D*****  She knows a bit about my life too. Hey, we try to be human in the age of AI as the androids gather in the wings.

I feed in some language. She mentions the idiom 'opening a can of worms' which her English boss said to her in a meeting and grabbed her interest. The silent bs in numb and dumb. She brings up Michael McImtyre's Silent Letter Day sketch and I say I'll put it on the to do list. These lessons go where the students want them to or at least I try foster that approach. I say let's do Mergers & Acquusitions at some point and she asks if she ca head half an hour early and we'll see each other in a few weeks. I have half an hour more to breakfast fully and  listen to music.

Next one's  ten. I'm full with toast and egg. Insurance O**** is there.M*** S**** hasn't made it for months.  O****'s boss. Though you wouldn't know it. They rib each other constantly. One supports Fortuna Dussledorf. one FC Koln. Kolm have just been promoted to the Bundesliga. Stolen Fortuna's star asset Isak Johanneson. He declared undying loyalty to them then signed for their big rivals and is kissing their badge every time he scores. Much to the fury of  M*** S****  and  O****'s  amusement.

 O**** knows my personal predicament . That I'm a Newcastle fan and have been since I was six and lived in Newcastle for twenty years.But that I'm pretty much fed up of the game and its ubiquity and general corruption, toxicity and predictability. Everything that's wrong with the world is wrong with football I've decided. I can still enjoy it. I just don't want to talk about it all the time. I can't anymore..In some ways it's lost much of its joy for me. 

This has been particularly heightened for me persomally all summer. Alexander Isak Newcastle' s star asset and magical goalscorer has decided he no longer wants to play for Newcastle and would rather play for Liverpool because they have turned his and his agents heads. Despite the fact that Isak srill has a couple of years left to run on his contract and Liverpool have shown themselves unwilling to pay his market value price instead unsettling the player and his agents and consequently the whole clubs preparation for the season. It's been a story that's progressed like a slug making its way up your garden path all morning. 

I'm not kidding myself. Newcastle are just as bad in this respect as anyone else. They're owned by the Saudi Arabian government. I care more about women's rights, gay people's rights and general human rights than twenty two people running around chasing a pig's bladder for ninety minutes. I've  come to the conclusion that fooball is essentially fixed. Why on earth would it not be. Theres' far too much money at stake to allow the likes of Brighton and Brentfird a seat at the Top Table. Newcastle will get there eventually but in the meantime Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea amd  Spurs will feast. and guard their plates hawkishly. Me I'd rather listen to music, chat to Ania and teach lovely Germans.

But today O**** knows something I don't and is eager to share it with me. Newcastle themselves are closing in on a prized assset themselves. They're just about to sign Nick Woltemate, Stuttgart's attacking midfielder for a record fee, much to the fury of Uli Hoeness the executive director and all round dodgy type who covered him for Bayern Munich and thought he had a god given right to get his own way. .  

Anyway, we bid each other farewell. O**** is a wonderful man and it doesn't feel like work teaching him even though I've managed to highlight the false friend potential trickery of occasion and opportunity and a couple of other things in our hour together. This is all much better than the relentless competition and mendacity I was embroiled in for fifteen years before I surfaced and started doing this last January to my immense relief.. 

I teach another class whuch I'll spare you the details of. Have an hour circuiting the fitness centre and I'm off into town. I only now can start to focus on the pressing immediate matter that I'm going to see Peter Buck, who's essentially as close to an actual hero as I've ever had. R.E.M. mean more than I could ever express. They were the band that I fell in love with when I was 17 when I bought Murmur and played it relentlessly until Reckoning came out, Then I played that relentlessly until Fables of the Reconstruction appeared. 

Then I went to university, my world changed. I spent two incredible terms with the three guys in my corridor bonding in the way you only bond at university. Playing R.E.M. constantly, constantly. With Rod the guy next door who was the first person I ever met who loved the band like I did.

I saw them twice over this period . With my brother and sister. The second gig at the Hammersmith Palais the most entrancing, astonishing and life changing gig I will ever witness. And I've seen a lot of incredible gigs. And now I'm striding down the slope to The Cluny in the Ouseburne Valley. It's a beautiful evening. I'm going to see Peter Buck play in a small intimate venue and I'm determined to park myself right in front of the stage all evening.

Suddenly a tall, distinguished man walks past me in the evening sunlight into the door of the Ship Inn, the old school garden pub directly opposite the Cluny. I'm momentarily transfixed. It's him . It's him. 'I didn't waste time, I just walked right up.' and said Peter I don't want to bother you. I just want to say thanks.

He says without a pause. 'Well thank you for meaning that I never had to work in McDonald's'.'I know his voice. It's deeply familiar to me' I know that slow recognisable drawl. I say. 'Well  you made sure that would never happen/'. I honestly don't want to bother him. I don't want a photo. He has a right to his space. But I rabbit a bit anyway.I can't stop myself. We talk about how this is where it started at least in the UK. Newcastle. I saw them on The Tube in 1983 when I had never heard of them  and I tell him I just had no idea what I was seeing.. That nobody ever moved like Peter Buck before or since. It's something I truly feel. I'm glad I said what I said. 

Anyway I've said what I want to say.I say have a great evening and leave him to his drink.  I've had my moment. I'm sure Peter's used that McDonald's line with a lot of people. But this time he said it to me.  He must never get left alone. I've no idea what that must be like. That level of fame. Buck is obviously not as well known as Michael Stipe but to music lovers he and the other R.E,M. guus occupy a sacred space. There's nobody like them. They're an indication that you can do something like this. Treat each other well and maintain your dignity and integrity. That's why these people and moments mean so much to me.

Anyway I'm up the hill lost in the moment. I sit down in the Tanner's Arms and text my sister who is the person in the world who knows best exactly what this will mean to me. That it's actually a moment I'll remember for the rest of my life and will bring me an incredible sense of closure. I eat some chips. Drink a pint of coke. In some ways I feel like I've already had my evening. But the gig is yet to come. 

I make my way down to the venue. Get in as soon as the doors open buy a beer and go straught to the front and grab a prize spot right on the lip of the stage. It's quite easy actually. I'm not shifting. Peter is playing twice tonight. Woth the same four musicians. As Minus Five and then as Luke Haines & Peter Buck ; Scott McCaughey, Luke Haines, Linda Pitmon and Nick Fowler..

Minus Five are on fairly promptly without standing on ceremony. McCaughey takes the lead. He and Haines, wearing a large boater perch as the front two . Buck plays bass behind them, always the total team musician, not wanting to repeat himself, his guiding role in R.E.M, steering them onwards.

Minus Five are essentially a Garage band. Buck always had a thing about this. .Hey, he worked in a record shop before R.E.M. The band played Hey Little Girl and Superman Minus Five built up a head of steam with a number of melodic but fierce numbers. They're drilled but spontaneity is prized amd allowed for. Essentially they just want to have a good time and a good time is had by all. The Modern Lovers She Cracked is played mid set. The epitome of this kind of attitudinal Rock & Roll.

It's cool. A part of me wonders as they leave the stage whether I've had my money's worth but I'm not feeling tired. I've had an hour of exercise and I'm feeling good. Anyway as they take the stage essentially for Haines turn in the spotlight I'm glad I stayed.

They play the choice cuts from their latest album Going Down To The River .... To Blow My Mind. I realise immediately that's it's alrogether a more powerful proposition than I gave it credit for in my cursory review a few weeks ago. I mist revisit and rewrite, it..It's an acid pastoral minor classic. With a lot of Mott and Glam when performed live. 

Buck at last has his rickenbacker slung round him though it doesn't sound like it tonight. I watch him almost exclusively. This might be the last time I see him though I'll make every effort for that not to be the case. He's just thrilling to watch.

He's the ultimate team guy, that's how he works and though I've seen him a few times down the years this was the closest I ever got . He's such a generous and versatile player. He watches the team he's playing with. Elevates them though he's essentially modest. He's focused on the task at hand primarily but able to enjoy the experience. Essentially you know you're watching one of the greats but a man wuth his feet sufficiently on the ground to retain his modesty and humanity.

I'm siory I haven't written much about Haines or the rest of the band but emotionally for me the evening was about seeing a true hero of mine. Your heart only truly opens on a few occasions over the course of a lifetime. If you're lucky. I saw him, shook his hand and reminded myself exactly why his body of work and approach to Rock & Roll resonates so depply within me. It was an incredible and rather beautiful evening for me. .